1. Field
The present disclosure relates generally to aircraft and, in particular, to managing equipment on an aircraft. Still more particularly, the present disclosure relates to a method and apparatus for identifying a status of equipment on an aircraft.
2. Background
Equipment in an aircraft is inspected at different times. Some equipment may be inspected between flights, while other equipment may be inspected during scheduled maintenance. The inspections are performed to determine whether the equipment is still present in the desired locations. The inspections also may be made to determine whether some equipment is not functioning as desired or has expired and needs replacement.
Currently many airlines perform these inspections during pre-flight, maintenance checks, and at other times to ensure that the necessary standard equipment items are present and in working condition. The equipment needs to be in working condition to allow the aircraft proper certification to operate.
The current manual monitoring processes may be time-consuming and prone to human error and thus may not identify all of the existing issues.
Further, equipment with expiration dates may not take full advantage of its life-span because its expiration date may be between inspection intervals, so they are replaced early. In other words, an inspection may indicate that a piece of equipment will expire before the next inspection. As a result, the piece of equipment may be replaced prior to the next inspection, resulting in early replacement.
Therefore, it would be advantageous to have a method and apparatus that takes into account at least some of the issues discussed above as well as possibly other issues.